Public hearings on legislation to abolish the long gun registry will be held in May and by early June, it could be sent to the House of Commons to await a final vote.
Now, anti-registry activists are worried that opposition MPs who favour keeping the registry will dominate the committee studying it and will try to gut it.
They are organizing a national lobby to try to convince Liberal and New Democratic parties to appoint MPs to the public safety committee who voted in favour of the bill in November.
Read Also
European wheat production makes big recovery
EU crop prospects are vastly improved, which could mean fewer canola and durum imports from Canada.
As it stands, the majority of MPs on the committee that will study the bill voted against it at second reading in November. At that time, the anti-registry bill was approved in principle by a vote of 164 to 137, with 20 mostly rural Liberal and NDP MPs voting for it.
In a recent speech to the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters in a Toronto suburb, bill sponsor and southern Manitoba rookie MP Candice Hoeppner said getting the membership of the committee changed for hearings is the next battleground in the long fight to end the registry.
“My private member’s Bill C 391 is at committee stage and we know that 20 Liberals and NDP say they support ending the long gun registry and they voted for my bill on Nov. 4, 2009,” she said. “Yet none of them are on the committee to study the bill and make sure it is given fair treatment at committee.”
When committees were established after the March 3 start of the parliamentary session, none of those 20 were named by their parties as a member of the public safety committee and none had been members in the last session.
But parties can send substitute MPs to the committee and Hoeppner said anti-registry activists should lobby those 20 opposition MPs to demand that they ask for a seat at the committee when C 391 is before it.
“Tell them we still need their help to see this bill through and they cannot just sit back quietly while their parties try to kill the bill,” she said.
As it stands, the 12-member Commons committee has seven opposition MPs who voted against the bill and five Conservatives who voted for it. The chair is longtime anti-registry MP Garry Breitkreuz.
